Companies are increasingly becoming multinational. One difficulty multinational companies have is dealing with the numerous number formats that are used throughout the world. Dealing with the numerous number formats is a particular area of concern for designers of spreadsheet program modules. Spreadsheets inherently involve numbers and are often used to make important business and legal decisions. Therefore, it is important that spreadsheets handle numbers properly throughout the world.
Some spreadsheet program modules have different versions depending upon the country of use (such as a German version, a U.S. version, etc.). The version determines how numbers are to be displayed to the user. For example, if a Japanese user creates a spreadsheet using a Japanese version of a spreadsheet application program module and sends it to a U.S. user using a U.S. version of the spreadsheet application program module, the numbers in the spreadsheet will appear differently in the U.S. version than in the Japanese version. The U.S. version makes a best approximation as to how to display the numbers in the U.S. Sometimes, however, it is important that the spreadsheet appear exactly the same to the Japanese user and the U.S. user. Sometimes the approximation will change the appearance of the spreadsheet and cause users to doubt the integrity of the spreadsheet. Therefore, it is extremely important in many cases that a spreadsheet appear as it was originally drafted.
Thus, there is a need for a method and system for simplifying the handling of numbers specific to individual countries.